c. 1998 Religion News Service

CLEVELAND _ They were yelling back and forth now, the warm-up man for the Pentecostal crusade shouting,”I want you to say `special,'”and the crowd responding _ each time with increasing excitement _”Special.” As the noise inside Public Hall at the Cleveland Convention Center grew to a low rumble, the Rev. Greg Mauro raised his voice in one final exhortation:”I want you to say, `I am special.'””I am special!”some 7,000 people screamed back.

What is special to this crowd of charismatic evangelicals is that Morris Cerullo, the would-have-been savior of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s resort empire and an international evangelist who has raised hackles from Moscow to Jerusalem with his aggressive proselytizing, chose Cleveland for his first major crusade in North America in five years.

Crusade officials say more than 300 area churches worked together to bring Cerullo to Cleveland, but his visit here is not without some of the controversy that has followed the cherub-faced evangelist throughout the world.

Officials of Morris Cerullo Mission to Cleveland sent invitations to the doctrinally fundamentalist Christian crusade to many area Jewish people, encouraging them to come Friday (Aug. 7) for”a special night to honor Israel.” Area Jewish leades and some Christian leaders of Mission to Cleveland denounced the invitation.”This letter is very hurtful to our community and it is very deceitful,”said Anita Gray, past chairwoman of the community relations committee of the Jewish Community Federation.”You can’t be a Hebrew and a Christian at the same time. You can’t be half-pregnant.” The San Diego-based Cerullo does the bulk of his work overseas, but raises much of his money in the United States through television shows and mass mailings. His stated goal is to reach every nation in the world for Christ by 2000, and followers are encouraged to become members of his Century Club by donating $100 a month.

So why did Cerullo pick Cleveland _ not exactly a hotbed of prophecy-style evangelism?

God told him to, Cerullo said.

Fifteen months ago, while in town for a meeting with supporters, Cerullo was walking downtown when”the Holy Spirit said to me, `I want you to come to this city of Cleveland. I am going to do something very special in this city.'” In Cleveland, the crowds are not the stadium-sized groups he has drawn overseas, but on opening night Monday (Aug. 3), Public Hall was more than two-thirds full. And the predominantly black Pentecostal audience had the place rocking early.”You’re going to be blessed tonight out of your socks. Your socks might come off tonight,”Mauro, mission director and vice president of Morris Cerullo Ministries, told the enthusiastic audience.

With the sound system turned up to rock-concert decibels and the crowd cheering and clapping to rival the noise from the cheap seats at a Cavaliers playoff game, a series of musical performers played to an audience ready to shout and dance their way to the Lord.

Fred Hammond and Radical for Christ, a Detroit group featuring 10 backup singers and a six-piece band, had people jumping and pumping their hands in the air as they sang,”He’s here right now. He’s here right now.” In contrast, the short, 66-year-old Cerullo, with slicked-back black hair and a bright yellow tie, was restrained. He would allow his voice to go up or down a couple of notches, but he limited expressions of emotions to a familiar gleaming white smile when he wanted to emphasize a point.

He kept to a fundamentalist themes so devoid of topical reference his words could as easily have been preached by Billy Sunday earlier this century or by Billy Graham today. In one of his attempts at humor, Cerullo made fun of Darwinian views of evolution.”I’m so glad to tell you here tonight in Cleveland that you did not evolve from a monkey,”Cerullo said.”We didn’t come from the evolution of apes. God created man.” Hundreds of people came to the altar call seeking assurance of salvation as Archies Dennie Jr., an African-American counterpart to Billy Graham’s longtime musical sidekick Cliff Barrows, sang”Only Trust Him.” For the people who came to the crusade from throughout the United States, Cerullo did not disappoint.”I love him. I love him,”said Linda Marion of Atlanta.”I know that he’s anointed and anointed of God.” Brother Kevin Williams, 34, of the United Pentecostal Churches of Christ in Cleveland, said Cerullo is able to appeal to a racially mixed audience because he speaks”the truth.””When you are a child of God, there’s no color. Love has no color,”he said.

However, the success of the crusade and some of its methods are being questioned.

In encouraging people to come to the crusade Friday night, Cerullo made no mention of a celebration of Israel. But the letter to local Jewish persons on the mission’s letterhead invited them”to a special night to honor Israel.””If they really believe in their mission and they think their mission would work, why do they have to resort to such a ruse?”Gray said.

The Rev. Marvin McMickle of Antioch Baptist Church, a member of the mission’s executive committee whose name was on the letterhead of the invitation, said he was not informed of the letter.”I don’t think we ought to be having Christian evangelists targeting people of other traditions,”he said.

But in an interview Monday (Aug. 3), Mauro said it is part of the responsibility of Christians to evangelize everyone.”We just feel like Jesus said, `Go,’ and our job is to obey, and leave the results up to him.” Cerullo’s single-minded approach to evangelism has often drawn criticism from other religious leaders, who claim many of his methods are deceptive or insensitive to the lands he visits.

In Moscow in October, Cerullo drew 11,000 people for a meeting in defiance of a new law limiting the rights of nontraditional faiths in Russia. Early last year, a mass mailing of Christian tracts to Israelis by Cerullo’s Worldwide Evangelism Inc. triggered a move to pass a bill that would jail anyone who possesses or imports tracts aimed at religious conversion.

Cerullo may be best known here for his purchase of the Heritage USA resort in Fort Mill, S.C., lost to bankruptcy by Bakker. Cerullo bought the property along with Malaysian investors in 1990, but two years later divested his interest after he was sued twice by his partners.

Mauro did not disclose the Mission to Cleveland budget, but said a financial statement would be issued after the event, which ends with a healing service Saturday (Aug. 8).

The Rev. Paul Endrei, pastor of Church on the Rise in Westlake, said Cerullo’s visit is an indicator that spiritual history is being made here.”We’re known as a comeback city, and we’re seeing a tremendous revival,”he said.

However, McMickle said, judging by local response to pre-crusade events and an appeal to area churches to take up offerings for the mission that he has”a hunch this is not working out as well as they had hoped. … I don’t really think most people know about Morris Cerullo.”

DEA END BRIGGS